The purpose of the TRAcking Carbon Emissions programme (TRACE) program is to develop new technologies and methods for high-accuracy monitoring of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, for tracking the effectiveness of emissions reduction policies in the context of the Paris Agreement on Climate.

The project will perform the research needed by corporate partners Thales Alenia Space, SUEZ and TOTAL to match their products to new demands for improved greenhouse gases emissions measurement methods, going from the scale of an industrial site up to national and global GHG budgets.

The project addresses three main objectives : 1) creating a long-term partnership between three major industry players and leading researchers, 2) training young scientists and corporate staff, 3) developing innovative methods to quantify and understand greenhouse gases emissions to support effective mitigation actions in different economic sectors, with a special focus on oil and gas upstream activities and waste and waste-water management for CH4 emissions, and on new spaceborne observations to monitor anthropogenic emissions from the scale of point sources to the entire globe

The technological building blocks are satellite-mounted infrared spectrometers instruments and arrays of low-cost sensors deployed in situ, on the surface, around emitting insdustrial sites and in urban environments. Thales Alenia Space, a leading satellite-manufacturing company, will lead the development of a new line of space-borne greenhouse gas measuring instruments to be launched within the next 10 years. SUEZ and TOTAL, two global operators in the waste and energy sector, will contribute the development and use sensors for tracking greenhouse emissions tracking systems for their operations. SUEZ further plans to market emission verification services during the course of the project.